My mother-in-law can grow anything, literally—she is a green-thumbed goddess.
Case in point? Her backyard.
I KNOW! It's ridiculous. People actually tour her backyard every summer. I am the antitheses of my mother-in-law, a Medusa of foliage who has the ability to turn any thriving, lush, green vegetation into shrivelled tumbleweeds blowing in the wind with a mere glance. Horticulturists run screaming when they see me approach, ripping their own plants out of the ground rather than leave them to my blackened thumb. Things go horribly awry when I try to grow plants.
My problem seems to lay not so much in the growing of the plant as it is in the maintaining of the plant. The growing is easy. Seed. Dirt. Water. Sun. Plant grows.
Simple.
But it seems once the plant has grown, having enough gall to pop through the soil in an attempt to garner sunlight, I simply forget it needs maintenance. I will remember to water it only when it has wilted and is mere seconds away from certain death. I don't know why this happens. I've never forgotten to feed my children. Nor have they ever become dehydrated on my watch. My only explanation for my watering defect is I'm missing the genetic genome which allows humans to remember plant watering.
Earlier in the year my mother-in-law gave my son a tiny cactus to take care of. And unlike his plant-challenged mother, he's been doing a magnificent job. But with school and activities and such, the caring of the cactus was handed off to the one person in the world who has the uncanny ability to kill it.
I think he saw me coming.
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